IF
Bayonne is the centre of commercial af­fairs for the
Basque country, its citizens must at any rate go to Biarritz if they
want to live "the elegant and worldly life."

The
prosperity and luxury of Biarritz is very recent; it goes back only
to the second empire, when it was but a village of a thousand souls
or less, mostly fishermen and women.

The
railway and the automobile omnibus make communication with Bayonne
to-day easy, but formerly folk came and went on a donkey side-saddle
for two, arranged back to back, like the seats on an Irish
jaunting-car. If the weight were unequal a balance was struck by
adding cobble-stones on one side or the other, the patient donkey not
minding in the least. This astonishing mode of conveyance was known
as a cacolet, and replaced the voitures and fiacres
of other resorts. An occasional ex­ample may still be
seen, but the jolies Bas­quaises who conducted them have
given way to sturdy, bare-legged Basque boys — as picturesque
perhaps, but not so entrancing to the view. To voyage "en
cacolet" was the neces­sity of our grandfathers;
for us it is an amuse­ment only.

Napoleon
III, or rather Eugénie, his spouse, was the faithful godfather of
Biarritz as a re­sort. The Villa Eugénie is no more; it
was first transformed into a hotel and later des­troyed by
fire; but it was the first of the great battery of villas and hotels
which has made Biarritz so great that the popularity of Monte Carlo
is steadily waning. Biarritz threatens to become even more popular;
some sixteen thousand visitors came to Biarritz in 1899, but there
were thirty-odd thousand in 1903; while the permanent population has
risen from two thousand, seven hundred in the days of the second
empire to twelve thousand, eight hundred in 1901. The tiny railway
from Bayonne to Biarritz transported half a million travellers twenty
years ago, and a million and a half, or nearly that number in 1903;
the rest, being mil­lionaires, or gypsies, came in
automobiles or caravans. These figures tell eloquently of the
prosperity of this villégiature impériale.

The
great beauty of Biarritz is its setting. At Monte Carlo the setting
is also beautiful, ravishingly beautiful, but the architecture, the
terrace, Monaco's rock and all the rest com­bine to make
the pleasing ensemble. At Biar­ritz the architecture of
its casino and the great hotels is not of an epoch-making beauty,
neither are they so delightfully placed. It is the sur­rounding
stage-setting that is so lovely. Here the jagged shore line, the blue
waves, the ample horizon seaward, are what make it all so charm­ing.

Biarritz
as a watering-place has an all the year round clientèle; in summer
the Spanish and the French, succeeded in winter by Ameri­cans,
Germans, and English — with a sprin­kling of Russians at
all times.

BIARRITZ

Biarritz,
like Pau, aside from being a really delightful winter resort, where
one may escape the rigours of murky November to March in London, is
becoming afflicted with a bad case of la fièvre du sport.
There are all kinds of sports, some of them reputable enough in their
place, but the comic-opera fox-hunting which takes place at Pau and
Biarritz is not one of them. It is entirely out of place in this
delight­ful southland, and most disconcerting it is as you
are strolling out from Biarritz some bright January or February
morning, along the St: Jean-de-Luz road, to be brushed to one side by
a cantering lot of imitation sportsmen and women from overseas, and
shouted at as if you had no rights. This is bad enough, but it is
worse to have to hear the talk of the cafés and hotel
lounging-rooms, which is mostly to the effect that a fox was
"uncovered" near the ninetieth kilometre stone on the Route
d'Es­pagne, and the "kill" was brought off in
the little chapel of the Penitents Blanc, where, for a moment, you
once loitered and rested watch­ing the blue waves of the
Golfe of Gascogne roll in at your feet. It is indeed disconcerting,
this eternal interpolation of inappropriate man­ners and
customs which the grand monde of society and sport (sic)
is trying to carry round with it wherever it goes.

To
what banal depths a jaded social world can descend to keep amused —
certainly not edified — is gathered from the following de­scription
of a "gymkhana" held at Biarritz at a particularly silly
period of a silly season. It was not a French affair, by the way, but
got­ten up by visitors.

The
events which attracted the greatest in­terest were the
"Concours d'addresse," and the "pig-sticking."
For the first of these, a very complicated and intricate course was
laid out, over which had to be driven an automobile, and as it
contained almost every obstacle and difficulty that can be conceived
for a motor-car — except a police trap, the strength and qual­ity
(?) of the various cars as well as the skill (??) of the drivers,
were put to a very severe test. Mr. —— was first both in "tilting
at the ring" and in the "pig-sticking" contests, the
latter being the best item of the show. One automobile, with that
rara avis, a flying (air-inflated dummy) pig attached to it,
started off, hotly pursued by another, with its owner, lance in hand,
sitting beside the chauffeur. The air inflated quarry in the
course of its wild career performed some curious antics which
provoked roars of laughter. Of course every one was delighted and
edified at this display of wit and brain power. The memory of it will
probably last at Biarritz until somebody suggests an automobile race
with the drivers and passen­gers clad in bathing suits.

The
gambling question at Biarritz has, in recent months, become a great
one. There have been rumours that it was all to be done away with,
and then again rumours that it would still continue. Finally there
came the Clemenceau law, which proposed to close all public
gambling-places in France, and the smaller "es­tablishments"
at Biarritz shut their doors with­out waiting to learn the
validity of the law, but the Municipal Casino still did business at
the old stand.

The
mayor of Biarritz has made strenuous representations to the Minister
of the Interior at Paris in favour of keeping open house at the
Basque watering-place, urging that the town would suffer, and Monte
Carlo and San Sebastian would thrive at its expense. This is probably
so, but as the matter is still in abeyance, it will be interesting to
see how the situ­ation is handled by the authorities.

The
picturesque "Plage des Basques" lies to the south of the
town, bordered with high cliffs, which in turn are surmounted with
ter­races of villas. The charm of it all is incom­parable.
To the northwest stretches the limpid horizon of the Bay of Biscay,
and to the south the snowy summits of the Pyrenees, and the adorable
Bays of Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Fon­tarabie, while behind,
and to the eastward, lies the quaint country of the Basques, and the
mountain trails into Spain in all their savage hardiness.

The
offshore translucent waters of the Gulf of Gascony were the Sinus
Aquitanicus of the ancients. A colossal rampart of rocks and sand
dunes stretches all the way from the Gironde to the Bidassoa, without
a harbour worthy of the name save at Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
Here the Atlantic waves pound, in time of storm, with all the fury
with which they break upon the rocky coasts of Brittany fur­ther
north. Perhaps this would not be so, but for the fact that the
Iberian coast to the south­ward runs almost at right
angles with that of Gascony. As it is, while the climate is mild,
Biarritz and the other cities on the coasts of the Gulf of Gascony
have a fair proportion of what sailors the world over call "rough
weather."

The
waters of the Gascon Gulf are not always angry; most frequently they
are calm and blue, vivid with a translucence worthy of those of
Capri, and it is that makes the "Plage de Biar­ritz"
one of the most popular sea-bathing re­sorts in France
to-day. It is a fashionable watering-place, but it is also, perhaps,
the most beautifully disposed city to be found in all the round of
the European coast line, its slightly curving slope dominated by a
background ter­race decorative in itself, but delightfully
set off with its fringe of dwelling-houses, hotels and casinos.
Ostend is superbly laid out, but it is dreary; Monte Carlo is.
beautiful, but it is ultra; while Trouville is constrained and
af­fected. Biarritz has the best features of all these.

The
fishers of Biarritz, living mostly in the tiny houses of the Quartier
de l'Atalaye, like the Basque sailors of Bayonne and
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, pursue their trade to the seas of Ice­land
and Spitzbergen.

As
a whaling-port, before Nantucket and New Bedford were discovered by
white men, Biar­ritz was famous. A "lettre patent"
of Henri IV gave a headquarters to the whalers of the old Basque
seaport in the following words:

A
dozen miles or so south of Biarritz is Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The
coquettish little city saw in olden times the marriage of Louis XIV
and Marie Thérèse of Spain, one of the most brilliant episodes of
the eighteenth century. In the town is still pointed out the Maison
Lo­habiague, a queer little angle-towered house, not in
the least pretentious, where lived for a time the future queen and
Anne d'Autriche as well. It is called to-day the Maison de
l'In­fante.

There
is another historic edifice here known as the Château Louis XIV,
built by him as a residence for occupation "on the day of his
marriage." It was a whim, doubtless, but a worthy one.

St.-Jean-de-Luz
has become a grand pleas­ure resort, and its picturesque
port has little or no commercial activity save such as is in­duced
by its being a safe port of shelter to which ships may run when
battled by adverse winds and waves as they ply up and down the coasts
of the Gascon Gulf. The ancient marine opulence of the port has
disappeared entirely, and the famous galettes Basques, or what
we would call schooners, which hunted whales and fished for cod in
far-off waters in the old days, and lent a hand in marine warfare
when it was on, are no more. All the waterside activity to-day is of
mere offshore fishing-boats.

Vauban
had planned that Saint-Jean-de-Luz should become a great fortified
port. Its situ­ation and surroundings were admirably
suited to such a condition, but the project was aban­doned
by the authorities long years since.

The
fishing industry of Saint-Jean-de-Luz is very important. First there
is "la grande pêche," carried on offshore by
several small steamers and large chaloupes, and bringing to
market sardines, anchovies, tunny, roach, and dorade. Then
there is "la petite pêche," which gets the
shallow-bottom fish and shell­fish, such as lobsters,
prawns, etc. The traffic in anchovies is considerable, and is carried
on by the cooperative plan, the captain or owner of the boat taking
one part, the owner of the nets three parts of one quarter of the
haul; and the other three-quarters of the entire pro­duce
being divided equally among the crew. Similar arrangements, on
slightly varying terms, are made as to other classes of fish.

Saint-Jean-de-Luz
had a population of ten thousand two centuries ago; to-day it has
three thousand, and most of those take in boarders, or in one way or
another cater to the hordes of visitors who have made of it — or
would if they could have suppressed its quiet Basque charm of
colouring and character — a little Brighton.

Not
all is lost, but four hundred houses were razed in the mid-eighteenth
century by a tem­pest, and the stable population began to
creep away; only with recent years an influx of strangers has arrived
for a week's or a month's stay to take their places-if idling
butterflies of fashion or imaginary invalids can really take the
place of a hard-working, industrious colony of fishermen, who thought
no more of sailing away to the South Antarctic or the Banks of
Newfoundland in an eighty-ton whaler than they did of seining
sardines from a shallop in the Gulf of Gascony at their doors.

Enormous
and costly works have been done here at Saint-Jean-de-Luz since its
hour of glory began with the marriage of Louis XIV with the Infanta
of Spain, just after the cele­brated Treaty of the
Pyrenees.

The
ambitious Louis would have put up his equipage and all his royal
train at Bayonne, but the folk of Saint-Jean would hear of noth­ing
of the sort. The mere fact that Saint-Jean could furnish fodder for
the horses, and Ba­yonne could not, was the inducement for
the royal cortège to rest here. Because of this event, so says
tradition, the king's equerries caused the great royal portal of the
church to be walled up, that other royalties — and mere plebeians —
might not desecrate it. History is not very ample on this point, but
local legend supplies what the general chronicle ignores.

On
the banks of the Nivelle, in the days of Louis XIII, were celebrated
shipyards which turned out ships of war of three hundred or more
tons, to battle for their king against Spain. In 1627, too,
Saint-Jean-de-Luz fur­nished fifty ships to Richelieu to
break the blockade of the Ile of Ré, then being sustained by the
English.

One
recalls here also the sad affair of the Connétable de Bourbon, his
conspiracy against the king of France, and how when his treachery was
discovered he fled from court, and, "ac­companied by
a band of gentlemen," galloped off toward the Spanish frontier.
Here at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, almost at the very entrance of the easiest
gateway into Spain through the Pyre­nees, Bourbon was last
seen straining every power and nerve to escape those who were on his
trail, and every wit he possessed to secure an alliance with the
Spanish on behalf of his tottering cause.

"By
Our Lady," said the king, "such trea­son is a
blot upon knighthood. Bourbon a man as great as ourselves! Can he not
be appre­hended ere he crosses the frontier?" But no,
Bourbon, for the time, was safe enough, though he met his death in
Italy at the siege of Rome and his projected Spanish alliance never
came off anyway.

and
his words, and the Latin inscription on its face, have served to make
this little Basque village celebrated.

"Vulnerant
omnes, ultima necat"

Travellers
by diligence in the old days, pass­ing on the "Route
Royale " from France to Spain, stopped to gaze at the Horloge
d'Urrugne, and took the motto as something per­sonal,
in view of the supposed dangers of trav­elling by road.
To-day the automobilist and the traveller by train alike, rush
through to Hendaye, with never a thought except as to what new form
of horror the customs inspec­tion at the frontier will
bring forth.

Urrugne
is worth being better known, albeit it is but a dull little Basque
village of a couple of thousand inhabitants, for in addition it has a
country inn which is excellent of its kind, if primitive. All around
is a delightful, green-grown landscape, from which, however, the vine
is absent, the humidity and softness of the cli­mate not
being conducive to the growth of the grape. In some respects the
country resembles Normandy, and the Basques of these parts, curiously
enough, produce cider, of an infini­tesimal quantity to be
sure, compared to the product of Normandy or Brittany, but enough for
the home consumption of those who affect it.